


The Attraction Between the Sides of the Same Coin

by Gadhar



Series: Two Lessons in the Art of Distraction [2]
Category: The Expendables (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-27
Updated: 2015-09-27
Packaged: 2018-04-23 17:41:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4885822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gadhar/pseuds/Gadhar





	The Attraction Between the Sides of the Same Coin

He’s pressed up against the wall and all the air leaves his lungs in one fell swoop and his head is spinning and he thinks he’s gonna fall over and there’s Barney just so fucking _close._

They’re chest to chest against the wall, Barney pressing into him and Lee can smell the sweat and the cologne mingling together and it makes his nose itch like he’s gonna sneeze because that’s some godawful strong smelling shit and what the fuck was Barney thinking when he bought it?

“You good?” Barney rumbles against his neck and fuck why is he so close? Lee can feel the sound in his chest and then somewhere else a little more south and he holds back a noise before giving a mute nod. 

Barney’s lips seem to get closer and it takes every bit of self-restraint and more to not let his gaze drop and his only saving grace is focusing on the slight twinge as Barney’s radio presses into the space between his vest at an awkward angle and it pinches his skin.

Then Barney’s moving away and suddenly everything rushes back and Lee can hear the distant gunshots and the soft footfalls of the retreating soldiers that almost discovered him and Barney before Barney shoved him up against the wall.

 _Stop thinking with your dick, Christmas,_ he tells himself as he follows Barney down the tunnel because he really can’t be this distracted on missions and flying half-mast in the middle of a battleground is more than a little weird.

 

He can’t find his fucking phone—where the fuck is it and he needs to get the fuck out of here and _godfuckingdamnit where is it?_ —when Barney leans against the wall like he fucking knows he’s pretty and Lee’s heart does a thing as Barney holds the phone out, waving it around with a grin saying, “Looking for this?”

His tone is a few shades off from pure humor and it’s one he’s come to associate with a lazy-relaxed Barney that’s always pleasant and he decided a while ago he really likes this Barney. Lee likes the ease of his movements and the ease in his mood, as though for once he’s not crucifying himself with all his past sins and when he’s not doing that Lee feels like he’s actually with Barney, not with some shell of the guy Barney’s supposed to be.

He goes for the phone only to have Barney play keep away with him and they end up wrapped around each other, the phone only held out of his reach because he’s doubled over with laughter with Barney’s arm still holding him back and the damn bastard still won’t give him his phone. 

“Come on!” It’s only half a whine and Barney only half mocks him for it but he gets the damn phone back. “Why do you have it anyway?”

 

“You dropped it on the plane, when you passed out on me.”

He’s pretty sure his jaw drops a little, no matter how much he tries to make it look like a yawn and his face is getting hot. Fuck. Fucking Barney. “Yeah well, still a little tired I guess. I’m gonna go back to my place, hit the sack and yeah.”

Barney’s eyebrow goes up in that same manner it does when Gunner’s trying to explain about how he doesn’t have an alcohol problem and Lee’s pretty sure his face goes even redder.

_Fucking Barney._

He pushes past the damn fucking idiot of a bastard before he think any longer about how he passed out on the cargo plane basically in Barney’s lap, before catching the last leg of travel in the albatross. 

God, hopefully he didn’t drool. 

 

There’s this fucking crick in his neck that had him up all night and he’s out of coffee and because of his fucked up shoulder he couldn’t get his arm up high enough to stitch the cut above his brow that left him in a pool of blood this morning and it wasn’t even _supposed_ to need stitching—

_“Let me get that for you, Christmas.”_

_“It’s fine, hardly a scratch.”_

_Barney just rolls his eyes the same way he does when Gunner says something stupid._

—and he’s pissed the fuck off. 

Mornings had been shit before and they’re even worse what with coming downstairs to find Barney in his fucking kitchen and all Lee can do is stare at his fucking arms because _what. the fuck._

“Your door was unlocked. Not safe but, I’m probably the only one that came in.”

Lee just makes a low noise in his throat, dropping into the seat across from Barney’s and laying his head down.

He only feels a little light-headed but with everything else he’s just not in the mood to deal with any of it. Why the fuck would you show up in someone’s house damn near half-naked anyway?

 _Fuckin’ bad manners is what it is._

“I told you it needed stitches,” Barney says and Lee remembers the pillowcase he was intending to trash. There’s a series of thunks and thuds as Barney moves around the kitchen, something’s set down in front of him but Lee’s already half dozing, more than willing to sleep right here on the table.

“Hey, you alright?” Barney’s hand pushes at his head and Lee squints in the light and at the pain in his neck at moving. He tries to stop himself from leaning too much into Barney’s hand though. “Jesus Lee, you look like shit.”

It spirals down into hell after that. Lee’s personal, carefully fashioned hell that plays on his nerves and his patience as Barney’s hands move over his body, stitching cuts and checking for injuries and it’s entirely clinical but there’s parts of Lee that don’t seem to agree with the sentiment and he’s really getting tired of the pure exertion that comes from trying to pretend that he doesn’t feel anything a little more deeper than friendship when it comes to Barney.

 

Lee pours the hydrogen peroxide down his chest and hisses at the burn, watching it slide over skin and fizzle in the cuts on his abs before being soaked into the towel at his waist. It just hasn’t been his month what with all the people managing to kidnap his pathetic ass and he knows a great part of it is because he can’t focus in the field.

It’s not life-threatening. Not yet at least. And it wouldn’t be quite the problem that it is if Barney wasn’t always so close to him but then, they’re partners that’s just how it goes and so Barney is always there and close and Lee finds himself having to inhale through his nose and close his eyes more often than not just to focus again.

He lays the gauze on next, going through the endlessly entertaining movements of trying to tape himself up. There’s a lot of stumbling around trying to keep your balance even though your dead tired and Lee resigns himself to the fact that he’s just gonna lay in bed and sleep for the next few days just to avoid having to do this again any time soon. 

 

Everything chafes and it’s all to tight and this is exactly why he’s a jeans and T-shirt type of guy not a spandex type of guy. Granted the shorts are denim and his poor excuse for a shirt is actually cotton so it at least breathes, but it still takes him awhile to figure out how to walk right and ignore the urge to tug at things because parts of this outfit are riding up and he really, really, ought to get paid more for this shit. 

Still he manages to walk in the club like he owns the place and it really takes only a few cheap lines, a charming smirk, and a good wink to get his target in a hotel room, tied to a chair under the pretext of a kinky night which really just ends with Gunner punching the guy until he coughs up the location of their target. But at the very least, Barney was decent enough to bring his trench coat and the thing at least gives Lee the illusion of dignity. Better even, after all is said and done and they get their guy, the coat is still rolled up at the bottom of Lee’s bag when he gets home.

 

He meets Lacy in at the dry cleaners and oddly enough he’s picking Barney’s coat up. 

She’s three people in front of him, long legs and long hair wrapped in a loose ponytail and there’s nothing particularly special about her. 

That’s what gets him though.

She’s not fake. She’s down to earth. Not classic model looks, but a beautiful in her own right, soft where he’s hard and she’s just so _normal._

That’s what gets him. Normality. A world that’s not soaked in blood and bonds forged from war. He always thought that’s where he’d get his happiness. If he could just balance the two, his world and that world, the normal one, then he’d have his chance. 

And it’s good for a while. She loves being called darling and it makes his chest swell to get her smiling like that, so unburdened. 

But she’s too normal. 

He fights murderers and rapists and kidnappers and arms dealers. 

She fights the temptation to fuck any attractive man that walks in front of her. 

“Cheating gene” Barney calls it. And he’s right. So fucking right that Lee hates him. 

Hates himself even more with every finger of scotch he downs.

 

He’s not surprised to wake up in Barney’s place. Not really. He’s just uncomfortable. For the first time, he is uncomfortable in the presence of the man he loves. 

And maybe that’s why. Because he realizes that he does love Barney. Not in a friendship way, not in brotherly way. It’s more of a full-on fuck me blind and cuddle me afterwards every night all night for the rest of my life and let me make you breakfast in the morning. 

It’s entirely frustrating because he can’t even make anything aside from eggs and cereal. 

But he’s here, in Barney’s bed, downing pills and water trying to make the hangover go away and holding back a night’s worth of vomit and Barney’s just there, asleep in his chair and it touches parts of Lee that quiver at the feeling and it makes him warm inside and it sucks. 

It fucking sucks. 

_The fuck yah gotten yerself into, Christmas? Fucking mess._

 

He feels burned after Stonebanks. Burned out and burned down. He stares at the walls when he’s not with the guys drinking and he’s gotten to the point where he doesn’t even see animals or shapes in the cracks of the paint. 

He just stares. 

It’s a sort of hollow feeling, like someone scooped out his insides and he spends an hour picturing that, wondering if he’d feel it; if his body could take the trauma of having the unimportant stuff gutted out of him, and if it could, how long would he last when they got to the vital organs and such. 

He’d be nothing more than a shell after that. A shell where all the human bits used to be and it’s a little demented, all that imagery, the blood that he swears he can see, but then, that’s what drinking is for. 

 

He looks at Galgo and he sees a repeat of Lacy but better. He says repeat because he knows there’s nothing there and nothing is going to come of it and it may be a mistake, in the long run. 

But it’s better because Galgo isn’t expecting anything either. He’s lonely and he’s horny and Lee can understand that.

Galgo’s tongue is hot in his mouth, Galgo’s body hot against his own and he says that only to get a response along the lines of “Spanish flare and Spanish heat” or some other such nonsense. He stops caring though once Galgo’s got his mouth on him, tongue swirling around his head.

It’s quick and dirty and they don’t curl around each other after it happens. Galgo goes home and Lee wraps himself around his pillow feeling vaguely guilty but overall exhausted and falls asleep wondering what Barney would think of him now. 

 

The last thing he remembers, in any degree of detail, is telling Barney he’s a fucking idiot. 

He can’t remember why. Or even when but it’s the first word on his tongue when he wakes up. 

Except he can’t talk because it hurts just to breathe and he decides it’s more important to figure out where he is now rather than worry about what happened before. But when he sees Barney, two hands clenched around Lee’s one, leaning forward in a chair, caked in grime and blood, he stops thinking about much at all except trying to get Barney to kiss him. 

Because right then he knows all he needs to. He almost died. He doesn’t know how but he can see what it’s done to Barney. And the more he thinks about it the more he tries to come up with reasons this won’t work and why it’s stupid. 

He comes up with a long list. 

And he still uses whatever strength he can muster to get Barney’s attention and beckon him closer. 

He gets the kiss because he fucking should, all else be damned, he’s been through hell. They’ve been through hell. 

It doesn’t feel right, or wrong. It doesn’t feel much of anything short of fucking fantastic and for the first time in a while Lee actually feels whole again. Together. And the realization of loving Barney that had been weighing on him like an anvil has morphed into some tight vice on his heart and he’s okay with that because at least there, it’s real. 

_It’s really fucking happening._

They’re actually a thing and of course it takes a near death experience to make it happen but whatever. He’s good with that. 

 

He gets out of the hospital a few weeks later and from there it’s a process. A process to learn what Barney likes. How to read his moods. Does he want to fuck Lee hard or does he want Lee to fuck him? Does that smirk mean passionate love-making with hours wrapped in each other’s arms or does it mean an hour session of hard ass pounding that ends with them asleep on opposite sides of the bed because it’s too fucking hot to be in each other’s space. 

And it’s a process of learning what his life is like now. How it feels to have someone who makes breakfast in the morning and dinner at night. To have someone who keeps stashes of Lee’s favorite snacks partly to use as bribes and partly just to laugh at the face Lee makes when sucking on a Werther’s caramel. To have a person who gives a fuck whether or not he sleeps okay at night and it’s all sorts of weird and wonderful and annoying and amazing. 

But of course, at night he just has to whisper in Barney’s ear about the time on this or that mission where he was half-hard and then they’ll be wrapped in each other all day and all night and that’s all he really wants. Someone that’s as much himself as they are their own self. 

It seems he was too busy looking for his opposite that he didn’t bother to consider someone that understood him to the point where he could swear they were the same.


End file.
